Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="s/LaSH" data-source="post: 816554" data-attributes="member: 6929">I surmise that's due to the negative energy that is somehow involved in the undead's life-force. Simply being near an undead is going to cause plants to wither, small insects to curl up and die, that sort of thing, just because there's this anti-life thing sitting there. A lot of undead in one place are going to cause a lot of destruction to the local ecosystem. And even if they become undead with the best of intentions, their whole being is now devoted to death, which will inevitably twist their minds towards evil.Sound about right?A vamp is stronger (physical ability bonuses, that sort of thing). A lich is hardier (if you kill it, it phylacterises right back at ya). Logically, in an evil society, the one who survives assassination rules. And the lich is the best at that. However, the vampire is still going to be a power in the land. Look at Vecna and Kas - lord and general. A lich won't necessarily have the muscle to back up its authority unless it has some vampire underlings to fly off and do its bidding.Other undead? The incorporeal types are probably high in the heirachy (and there will be a heirachy - some forms of undead are 'racially' superior to others, it's a statistical fact). Incorps are going to be walking through walls, spying on lesser beings (their touch attacks are largely useless against other undead), but a secret police who can call in vampires to tear rebellious zombies limb from limb is still a grade-A secret police.The unwilled types (skellywags, zombies) will be mindless labourers, of course. The 'lower' corporeal types (ghouls, wights, that sorta thing) will be grunts, functionaries, your basic lower-middle class. They can put up a fuss if they get torn limb from limb - without reason. Then there would be the uniques... things like devourers and nightshades that you would rarely see even in an undead realm. Devourers, if present, are smart and powerful - they're likely to work directly for liches, as torturers and advisors. Nightshades, on the other hand, are brutally smart and far more powerful than a mere lich, at least in physical terms - and a nightshade could very easily take on a lich with its energy resistances, magic detection and spell immunity. A nightshade of any type would probably be either a lone wolf causing havoc (chaotic evil, after all), shrugging off legions of undead grunts; a mercenary, a general without compare; or a ruler in its own right. Imagine... a nightcrawler whose palace is a wide-open courtyard of earth where it lies buried and communicates with telepathy. It's going to know if anyone tries to get near it (tremorsense), and is virtually assassination-proof simply by that fact. Only incorps could reach it, and they'd have problems - DR 25/+3, to be precise. Incorporeal touch attacks just don't do that amount of damage. If the beast turns invisible and summons its own pack of spirits, the would-be assassin hasn't got a chance.Hm, just thinking out loud there...</blockquote>

Verification